Gulf war – Little known facts

source: cryan.com

On the final night of the war--within hours of the cease-fire--two U.S. Air force bombers dropped specially designed 5,000-pound bombs on a command bunker fifteen miles northwest of Baghdad in a deliberate attempt to kill Saddam Hussein.

     The decision to seek United Nations involvement was part of a larger, more cynical strategy of the Bush administration to circumvent Congress, to bypass the constitutional authority of Congress--and only Congress--to declare war.

     During the very week King Fahd was persuaded to invite U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia in order to defend his monarchy from the alleged threat of an Iraqi invasion, a U.S. intelligence officer who was secretly sent to Kuwait by General H. Norman Schwarzkopf reported that Iraq had began withdrawing its Republican Guard divisions from Kuwait entirely.

     Several weeks before the Baghdad was bombed on January 17th, 1991, U.S. intelligence agents successfully inserted a computer virus into Iraq's military computers. It was designed to disable much of Baghdad's air-defense system.

     The largest tank battle of the war, which has previously has gone unreported in any detail, conclusively demonstrated the superiority of American tanks and fighting doctrine over that of the Soviets. As a whole, the battles of the ground war showed that American military maneuverability clearly outclassed the plodding tactics of the Iraqis, who emphasized pitched engagements and linear movements as they had been taught by their Soviet advisers.

     The size of the Iraqi army in the Kuwait Theater of Operations was probably much smaller than claimed by the Pentagon. On the eve of the war, Iraq may have had as few as 300,000 solders, compaired to 540,000 estimated by the Pentagon.

     In official reports, the Pentagon has admitted that of the 148 American servicemen and women who perished on the battlefield, 24 percent of the total killed in action were victims of 'friendly fire'. Eleven more Americans were killed when un exploded Allied munitions blew up, raising the 'friendly fire' percent to 31 percent. Most solders said that the thousands of unexploded mines and bomblets they encountered, were more dangerous than enemy fire.

     On January 29 1991, an Iraqi force, apparently comprising two infantry and one tank battalions, crossed the Kuwait border in the south-eastern front and headed in the direction of Khafji, a deserted Saudi town, some 12 miles from the frontier. Taking the small Saudi garrison by surprise, the Iraqis occupied the town and resisted allied attempts to dislodge them for nearly two days. In the ensuing fighting the Americans suffered their first casualties in ground fighting when 11 marines were killed (7 of them from friendly fire). The Iraqi losses in men and equipment were far higher, amounting to dozens of dead and hundreds of prisoners.

Falloujah Le Massacre Caché VO ST francais

Tibet massacre – 2008

Although denied by Beijing, the violent repression of the demonstrators and Tibetan monks is illustrated by a series of particularly violent photos, sent to the West by Tibetan dissidents. These are particularly harsh images, sent from the monastery of Kirti to the Free Tibet Campaign.

The photos were taken last March 16, in the autonomous Tibetan province of Amdo, which currently is part of the northern Chinese province of Sichuan. According to the Free Tibet Campaign, the massacre began after the religious of the monastery of Kirti chanted slogans in favour of "free Tibet" and the Dalai Lama. The monks were joined by 400 Buddhist nuns and the students of the local Tibetan middle school.

The Chinese police, which had been watching the monastery since the beginning of the protests (last March 10), opened fire on the crowd. According to information from the Tibetan government in exile, about 20,000 Tibetans of Sichuan have protested in solidarity with the Tibetan monks. Of the 20 certified victims of the repression, 9 have been identified: among these are young men of 15 and 17 years old.

 

Hamidian massacres

Source: Hamidian Massacres

 

In 1876, the Ottoman government was led by Sultan Abdul Hamid II. From the beginning of the reform period after the signing of the Berlin treaty, Hamid II attempted to stall their implementation and asserted that Armenians did not make up a majority in the provinces and that Armenian reports of abuses were largely exaggerated or false. In 1890, Hamid II created a paramilitary outfit known as the Hamidiye which was made up of Kurdish irregulars who were tasked to "deal with the Armenians as they wished." As Ottoman officials intentionally provoked rebellions (often as a result of over-taxation) in Armenian populated towns, such as the Sasun Resistance of 1894 and the resistance at Zeitun in 1895-1896, these regiments were increasingly used to deal with the Armenians by way of oppression and massacre. Armenians successfully fought off the regiments and brought the excesses to the attention of the Great Powers in 1895 who subsequently condemned the Porte.

The Powers forced Hamid to sign a new reform package designed to curtail the powers of the Hamidiye in October 1895 which like the Berlin treaty, was never implemented. On October 1, 1895, 2,000 Armenians assembled in Constantinople to petition for the implementation of the reforms but Ottoman police units converged towards the rally and violently broke it up. Soon, massacres of Armenians broke out in Constantinople and then engulfed the rest of the Armenian-populated provinces of Bitlis, Diyarbekir, Erzerum, Harput, Sivas, Trabzon and Van. Estimates differ on how many Armenians were killed but European documentation of the violence, which became known as the Hamidian massacres, placed the figures from anywhere between 100,000–300,000 Armenians.

Although Hamid was never directly implicated for ordering the massacres, he was suspected for their tacit approval and for not acting to end them. Frustrated with European indifference to the massacres, Armenians from the Dashnaktsutiun political party seized the European managed Ottoman Bank on August 26, 1896. This incident brought further sympathy for Armenians in Europe and was lauded by the European and American press, which vilified Hamid and painted him as the "great assassin" and "bloody Sultan." While the Great Powers vowed to take action and enforce new reforms, these never came into fruition due to conflicting political and economic interests.